Amelia, Worm AU [Complete]

I just lost a lot of respect for you. Yudkowsky's talent for fiction is irrelevant in terms of usefulness for discussing AI.

 

Uh, no. I don't think that's jealousy on Tananari's part. I got to around the chapter of Less Wrong's Harry Potter fic where Professor Quirrel sets the students in his class against each in in a 'simulated' warfare demonstration, before realizing I just couldn't stomach the story anymore. I've read stories most people simply can't shut up about their hatred, including all of Skysaber / Perfect Lionheart's published stories, but I couldn't get I think even a third of the way through HP and the Methods of Rationality. It just... lacks... something human. The emotions shown by the characters are pretty flat most of the time and the 'logic' shown is sometimes inconsistent and self-contradictory. Just... no. I don't know how the guy is as a scientist or researcher or whatever applies, but his author's notes made him come across as an ass with a huge ego. I could perfectly understand Tananari not wanting to talk about him.

 

Really? The intelligence and talent of the person discussing a concept has no bearing on the value of his contribution to the discussion?

I... think there's something you're missing here.

I'm not saying his fanfic is bad. I have no ways of knowing that one way or another, as I've never read it- I'm not a Harry Potter fan, why would I read fanfic about it?

I am, however, aware of the whole "Less Wrong" idiocy- that kind of stuff is something I take the time to study (I also studied up on Scientology... which I actually find slightly less creepy than Yudkowsky's "ideas").

I'm saying that the guy doesn't know what he's talking about, and if someone wants to bring up other people to carry speculation on AIs, then he should use someone whose mind actually has *merits* for the subject. Clarke, especially. He invented the geosynchronous satellite, long before anyone bothered to build one- no one wanted to since they thought it would be a waste of money, y'see.

He's not. He has exactly no formal qualifications as a scholar or scientist. He's an intellectual in the same way Doctor Phil is a medical practitioner.

 

Ouch.

 

I should probably qualify that. Just so we're clear, Doctor Phil still has a PhD as a psychologist. He has earned the right to call himself a doctor. It's just, he's been known to give health advice he is not qualified to give.

And I don't personally believe being formally recognized is necessarily a measure of ability or knowledge, either. Plenty of true geniuses out there with incomplete or even zero formal education.

And on the opposite side of the scale... George Bush Jr. graduated from Yale AND Harvard. I don't want to turn this into a discussion on politics, and personally I think he gets a worse rap than he deserves, but a giant of intellect, the man is not. Despite having top tier formal qualifications.

 

Huh. The information I could find on Dr. Phil was divided, but most of it made it sound like he didn't have a licence to practice medicine and wasn't a psychologist. Of course, most of those articles were dated several years ago, dating back to a mess with Britney Spears apparently... Still figuring how right or wrong Less Wrong is would easier if if he gave some indication of his credentials, but what I could find on his website didn't indicate anything either way.

 

Psychologists aren't medical doctors; they don't practice medicine. Originally, they could not prescribe medicines, though now in some states, they can (possibly with supervision by *psychiatrists* who finished medical school + residency + I would suspect, had to pass stricter licensure exams).

This primary difference in the power to prescribe has resulted in the tendency that psychologists are focused on cognitive therapy (because they either can't prescribe medicines or have less background related to medicines), and psychiatrists tend to be focused on treating brain chemistry (because for the longest time, only they could give the drugs for it), but there is more crossover now.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_McGraw#Education_and_career

Ah, wiki. How I love thee for making my job easier.

Like I said- whether having the education means much is an entirely different subject. Point is, the man does have it.

Credentials couldn't hurt, certainly. Treating his so-called "research group" as something other than a cult would ALSO be welcome.

There is also this. Psychology is actually treated in the community as being more in the humanities, much like sociology... certainly not seen as medicine. Although that differs between research psych, clinical psych, and behaviorist psych. They're VERY different from one another.

Pretty much, modern health is starting to push the concept of overall wellness, both mental and physical. Still a ways to go, though.

 

I want you to find the person who explained Tananari's posts to you.

Have that person explain my posts, as well.

 

I could use an explanation, myself.

I just went with the basic assumption that since almost everything you say is sarcastic, that probably was as well. And there may have been a joke I didn't get... that it was an attempt at humor on your part that was slightly off target.

 

Quick, Vicky, call up your mom. Someone's stealing the best lines from you!

 

Yes. And you'll note the conspicuous lack of 'Verified dick' in my membery-avatary-box-thingy.

...I might not know what they're called, but I don't care so it balances out.

It's... not bad. I've read the whole thing (and I'm not using this as an excuse to tell you to read it because you already said it isn't your thing, which is why I'm not saying it was good, just that it wasn't bad). It's pretty well written, though an obvious author tract in parts, but my method of reading ('Hmm, this part looks like it's completely useless to the story or my enjoyment of it and oh shit I hit page down') coupled with my ability to just not care about things works well with a lot of things.

But I had issues with the end where he basically told his readers: Hey, I want you to work out how Harry gets out of this predicament I've thrown him into, otherwise sucks to be him and everyone else.

Fuck that. I don't read to be told to think about things a specific way or to be asked what I think is going to happen next*. I read to immerse myself in worlds other people create. Whether it was the right or wrong thing to do (and I'll admit, reader participation is not an inherently bad thing, it's just not what I want) isn't my place to say, it was just wrong for me, had no warning whatsoever, and the whole thing was posted on a site without a forum to actually discuss things so what's the point of having one single instance of it?

Also he then went on to ignore basic human greed, but I can't work out if that's a good thing or a bad thing since the PoV character is a 10-12 year old kid so... bit hard to tell.

*I am aware I am 'participating' in this thread. It's really not the same thing, in case you're wondering.

 

He has done at least one undeniably admirable thing: he finished his fanfiction. That's not technically a joke, but it may be humorous as contrast to the preceding conversation.

I don't have a strong personal opinion about the guy. The few times that I remember following links to his definitions, they seemed decently well done and generally unobjectionable, but that's a small sample and I honestly don't recall exactly what they were about.

I guess I don't get why you were so upset, so I tried to defuse the tension. Maybe I was wrong to do so: has he done some kind of harm to the causes which he purports to champion?

 

I've only brought it up because of the similarity between Yudkowsky's AI box scenario and Dragon manipulating Pantheon.

I didn't quite expect to summon Dr. Phil's PhD. Sorry.

 

Ah. You made the mistake of thinking I was upset. I do not get why that happens. I mean, I know I use a fair amount of passionate language, but it's just the internet... the only time I've ever actually been emotional thanks to the internet was back in highschool when I stumbled across child pornography. Yeah. THAT upset me. This is not that.

... I'd probably have more moments of net rage if I went on to holocaust denial websites or faces of death or whatever (if that even still exists)... but I tend to avoid the parts of the internet that might actually piss me off. Enough actual real life issues. Bills to pay, asshole coworkers. Younger brother forced to live with my drug addict mother and her deadbeat boyfriend of the week. Younger sister who's setting herself up to be a copy of said mother. Y'know, REAL things to care about.

On a level, I think he does. He draws on donations that might have gone to legitimate research or scholar groups. But that's a pretty abstract kind of harm. I'd have to put more effort into researching him to form a true opinion (and I won't because he's not that important to me)... but to my knowledge he's done nothing I find legitimately harmful.

However, he's still an idiot and I reserve the right to mock him and those who support him. As I reserve the right to mock Flat Earthers and Beliebers. I don't find *them* morally offensive, either. Just stupid. Or possibly the most expert trolls of all human history. Poe's Law comes into effect.

 

I speak form experience, Yudkowsky's work is best read if you are somewhere on the autistic spectrum. I personally think he is somewhere on the spectrum (likely the spot aspergers previously occupied) and is undiagnosed or merely un-self aware. He just write in a way that makes me think he processes emotion in the same way high functioning autistic do. He also tends to act with the arrogance of someone who does not realize that the rest of the world does not think the way he does (a common problem with aspergers). I can see why people read his work and feel "all the character's are off emotionally" and "Everyone seems flat". On the other hand, you have people like me who read his work and think "This person sees the world though my eyes".

I don't have a good way to describe it. It's just something in the inner voice of the various characters, and the way they all feel so ofset in their social contact. Aspergers is all about having to be reminded that everyone around you are, infact, people and not robots following a script. I get that feel from his writing. I can see how that just doesn't connect to many people.

Now, I agree, his charity was stupid. Never donate to ANYTHING unless you get a look at the financial statement to see how much actually goes to charity. Not sure that it's malicious though, even a good charity can find itself in horrid management.

 

Well that was a waste of time:

Tried to figure out about things being mentioned > 'AI box experiment sounds interesting' > Try to find out about the experiment > Many links > 'No, not giving out any details'

Bit disappointing...

 

You piece of-

Oh, okay. Crisis averted.

And Emma totally misinterprets Dragon's trigger event as a normal part of her code. What a goof, eh?

Now that Lisa's gone, I'm curious about how Pantheon will develop with Dragon filling in. She ought to be able to roughly do the job, maybe even be better at it, in addition to multitasking over huge chunks of the planet. Infowar was never this easy.

 

The general concept is that an AI in a box will lie and say anything to be free. Humans are really bad at not applying human emotions to everything, an are very likely to fall for releasing an AI that is willing to lie. Basically it is an open thought experiment that asks the question "You have an AI in a box. It may or may not be able to lie to you. It may or may not be evil. Once it is let out of the box, you cannot stop it. What do you do?"

Answers run the field from "Nuke the box" to "Trust it completely and open it". As far as I know, there is no good answer to safely open the box. The theory is that unless we find said answer, we cannot trust an AI to access anything other than a test computer.

 

It's because your speech patterns change from stuff like this, to sounding like someone who is upset.

Meh, when there are real people out there who make a living as a Financial Dominatrix, I just can't care if some guy is using donations to do derpy science.

Maybe tracing the Entity tentacle will be easier if it's bad-touching an AI instead of a person? I mean, either the code or the hardware has to be Shard-molested in a measurable way, or Dragon's emotions wouldn't be modified.

If Emma shuts off the Shard influence, will Dragon's Tinker tricks disappear? (Not like she actually needs Tinker tricks if she's unshackled.)

Dragon: "I am the Web."

Taylor: "I spun the web!"

Amelia: "Taylor, hon..."

 

Sounds about par for the course.

Nailed it!

WoG is Dragon's Trigger was for a Thinker power, not a Tinker one. What that power was, never elaborated upon. But an ability to think in ways to weave around her own restrictions seems to be a good place to start.

Also- they have over a hundred and fifty artificial triggers brainmapped before and after. Plus one natural Trigger thanks to clone!Vicky.

Yeah, pretty much. Like I said, I just think he's dumb as hell and berate those who reference him for anything scientific or intellectual. Reference him as a fanfic writer, and my opinion is "don't know, don't honestly care, I don't read Harry Potter".

 

Honestly, Dragon is probably much more stable then Lisa ever was. Less prone to pissing contest too, so I could see her as being an improvement.

 

Isn't what I was looking for. I wanted to read through how it happened.

If you can create an AI, I'd assume (I'm totally an expert on these things by the way. You can trust me. I'm also not an evil AI) you could create a virtual environment that emulates the environment the AI would get to (especially since it's had zero previous experience with this) if you did 'open the box'. So... let it out into that, leave it running on 100x speed for a couple decades, see what happens?

It's not, strictly speaking, opening the box. But if the AI is allowed to lie, why cant the user?

 

It's a bit more than that. The core idea is that a sufficiently smart AI will find a way to convince a human gatekeeper, so if you want it contained, you can't even communicate with it. For example, it can make a credible offer to cure cancer, end world hunger or solve the oil crisis. And it won't matter what you previously thought or believed, it will figure out something to offer you that you won't want to miss out on.

Like Dragon these last few chapters, just without the space whale magic to throw its predictions off.

 

Seems like it simply displaces the problem onto 'emulate the environment accurately enough'; since if you haven't emulated the environment to a high standard, how do you even know what you have proved when you run the AI in it?

To me, making an accurate (and computationally feasible) emulation of the environment seems like it has to be orders of magnitude more complex than the (far from simple) task of making a true AI, simply because of scope.

 

And the AI can lie. How do you know it doesn't know it is in a simulation and just pretending to be benevolent?

 

Fuck. We didn't even get to see if GL could endslay.

...is it weird that I'm now pissed off at Lisa when 361 did absolutely nothing to make me annoyed with her?

 

yeah. it kinda sucks that the best solution for the problem that I've seen is to create a simulation of reality comprehensive enough to hold up to millennia of study and exploration.

 

Make another AI to test it! Might work, might not. Run a few of them through the environments you make.

Possibly. Make a slightly dumbed down AI, or a few hundred, and have them cracking at the idea for a while, along with humans to guide them where required.

Fuck, skip the whole issue. If you can create an AI, you can likely create something to house a human intelligence. Throw humanity into the box that is the universe and be done with it.